Blood Music (23 page)

“I don't exist,” Angel said abruptly. He seemed to be merely continuing a conversation. “These guys in their cars, they go back to Long Island to their wives and their babies and I don't exist. I took the test, three weeks ago, you know? And last week I came back positive. The cops roust us once in a while, but we don't exist for them either. Like roaches. You ever really think about the roaches you got in your nice clean apartment? Even if you never see them. Everybody dies, baby, right? So some die clean and some don't. I'm sorry what happened to your sister, all those girls, but nobody asked me, okay? He's kind of like a disease—except you don't wait around to start dying. I didn't tell because nobody asked me, okay? Just that one cop, and his partner stopped him. Because nobody anywhere gives a shit about any of us down here. I haven't got any get-well cards from the New York Police Department, you know? But of course you don't.”

One cheekbone hung a little higher than the other; it gave the boy's face the look of having been grasped improperly before it dried. John leaned forward to hear him, and Angel lifted his face toward him. Angel, yes. Great liquid eyes with something in them a child has, an absence of fear. A siren's mouth. John forced himself not to lean back, to admit the power of those eyes and that mouth. Of this boy. John could not keep his eyes off the mouth, it was like some exotic flower, venomous, voluptuous, ravenous. He watched it the way a woman watches a woman, with equal parts envy, distrust, and empathetic desire.

“You don't get to look forward to very much here,” Angel said. “Like—you see these guys?” Gesturing to the empty sidewalk, the street; there was a car at the light, a maggoty form behind the wheel. “They're all like that. Big fat guys. Or little guys like you. You're surprised, huh? Yeah, like you. You're from Queens, right? I can always tell. But you don't have the look. Like ferrets. I had a friend had a ferret, it always looked like it was afraid of you. Like it was going to bite. It never did, but I didn't like to pet it. I like gentle things. They have eyes like that, like, they're guilty and it's your fault. And then they go home to their wives. America's going to die, man, all these guys go home and fuck their wives they still got my spit. This guy, he didn't look like he had nobody to go home to.”

“What did he look like?”

“Not really like the picture, unless you've already seen him. But enough like it—but beautiful. He had eyes like—like he could have told you something. He really couldn't tell I'm not a Genny.” The boy was proud of that.

“I wouldn't have known, either.”

“You wouldn't? That's why they call me Angel. It's not my name, even though I'm a spic. My name is really Jesus. If my mother could see me now.” He rolled his eyes.

“Tell me about the man.”

“You don't think it's shit, what I do, but I tell you—what's so great about reality? Ain't nobody wouldn't leave it if they could. I was going to be in the movies. I can get a ride out to California anytime. One of my clients, he said I got the bone structure. Before this.” He touched his face.

“If you could tell me what happened—”

“He didn't know. He thought I was the real McCoy. Usually they like my act, you know? Where I come on all womanly and after I get a little butch. Show them my balls. You want to see my balls?”

“No.”

“Don't worry, I'm just teasing you. He was a beautiful man,” Angel went on. “So I opened the door and I got in.” He already knew every question John could have asked him, and he knew the things John would never ask. “He looked Asian, like Henry Miller. That's when I wish I'd lived.
Pied-à-terre. Glacé.
All those great words. And all those cafés where you can sit all afternoon for the price of a café au lait. He married a whore, you know. June. After I saw the movie I wanted to call myself June but I was already Angel by then. He had eyes like that. The man. You know I always thought I would know if something was going to happen—and I did. When he looked at me.” Angel looked across the street into nothing, into the man's eyes. “But when you know you're going to die anyway. I mean, I've got to live, you know? To make a living. And if it kills me—what was this, anyway?” caressing his Picasso cheek—“a memory, right? 'Cause it sure as hell ain't going to get me off the streets. It didn't change my life. But he was beautiful. So I got in. So what. And I did him—you ever been done by a man?”

“No.”

“I didn't think so. You come from Queens, right? Not even any fucking around when you were a kid? So, I got in the car and I did him and he was a pleasure, let me tell you some of these guys stink. And they hold you down so you have to swallow. I spit it back in their faces. They love it. But this guy—I thought maybe he could have been something more. You don't think it ever happens in the front seat of a car? With a whore? It happens. Men love whores. Like Henry Miller. I guess I'm just looking for a way out. I use condoms, I don't want to hurt nobody.” He was still looking away; he was talking to himself.

“He looked like the evil prince in a fairy tale. Every girl's dream. So I offered him a little bit more.” He stopped talking for so long that John thought he would not come back. “He said, ‘Do you know who I am?' That's all. While he was beating me. First I just thought he was turning himself on. I thought it wasn't me he was hitting. And he said—you know what he said? Like God, you know in the Bible, what's he say? ‘I am that I am.' Or
what
I am. But that's what he meant. Like God, like I'm supposed to know. And then later I saw the picture and I did know. The same guy that killed all those girls. It would have been a kick if he hadn't hurt me. I'm sorry. But it was—power is such an aphrodisiac—somebody else's. Do you like to feel powerful?”

“I like to feel like I'm not getting a bullshit act.”

“I'm sorry. I guess I'm a bad boy.”

“We're talking about the man who might have murdered my sister.” But he could see it, shining out of the cloudy pools of the boy's eyes:
I aroused his passion, and to me he imparted his secret.

“ ‘Do you know who I am,' ” Angel said softly. “I'm sorry.” He paused again. “And now I know who he is. But what good does it do you?”

“I need for you to tell me if you see him again. You can call me, maybe you can get his license number. And of course I can pay you—”

“I don't want your fucking money”—surprising John—“I don't know if I give a shit—I don't know. It's sad when beauty dies. It'll be sad when I die, won't it? I'll help you. If I don't lose your card or give it to somebody for a joke. John Nassent. Were there a lot of flowers at her funeral?”

“Yes.”

“I want a lot of flowers at my funeral. Were there a lot of people there?”

“Yes.”

“I got my whole funeral cortege right here,” gesturing at the empty street. “He said if he ever saw me again he'd kill me.”

“Oh. Well, I couldn't ask you—”

“I'm going to die anyway. I told you—I'm HIV positive. I'm walking around dead right now. It doesn't matter if I don't hurt yet. As soon as I do—first sign—I'm going to kill myself. I'm going to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. I'll be in all the papers. I was born in Brooklyn, you know that? This way I get to go out big but I don't hurt anybody else. It's going to be cool. I'm going to have all my friends come and watch.

“Don't feel sorry for me, man. I don't want to get old and lose my figure. You think I don't know what this means to you? That guy, somebody should kill him. You are going to kill him, aren't you? Because there's nothing as pretty as a girl—you think it's funny I say that, huh? Well, sometimes you don't get what you want in this life. Your sister, was she pretty? I would give anything to be a girl just for one day, man. Just for twenty minutes. To have a man look at me and—you know, when he hit me I wasn't surprised. He thought he had something else. Well, I got the real thing, but I never met no really nice man that wanted it.

“That car, I got to go.” He laughed. “But I will call. If I see him. And if you ever get curious, you don't really get AIDS from spit on your cock. If you need me ask Dixie, she knows.” And he was gone. John turned and walked back downtown; he was out of the meat-packing district in five minutes but he carried the boy in his head, the seductive, sepulchral smile and the eyes—the other pair of eyes that had seen the face of the man who murdered his sister.

“I
f I hadn't gotten him to take the Pedialyte I don't know what I would have done.” Zelly was only half listening to the woman next to her on the bench; hell would freeze over before Mary would take Pedialyte. And now she was trying to eat the wheel of somebody's tricycle. “I used Gatorade when Mary had it,” she said absently.

Zelly was looking through a copy of the
Post
while Mary played at her feet. It was Friday, June twenty-sixth, and the Slasher had written the
Post
another letter. WERE THE CHILDREN FRIGHTENED AFTER THEY FOUND HER? She was trying to act, inside herself, as though she weren't thinking about Pat at all. As though she were an audience to herself and had to put on a good performance.
I am not thinking about when Pat could have mailed a letter. I am not thinking about the fact that Pat was out late the night before the concert, that he was gone all during intermission. I have not been thinking about it.

“Joey threw up again this morning but I think we've gotten through the worst of it,” the woman said. Joey cried every time he had apple juice. “So don't give him apple juice,” said Zelly shortly, trying to read. Then she looked up from the paper. “But it's not that easy, I know. Mary cries for applesauce and if I don't give her applesauce heaven help me.” KELLY WAS HAPPY TO GO WITH ME, TO BE MINE FOR INTERMISSION. It was ridiculous to even think about it. Everything had been entirely normal since the night Pat came to get her and Mary at her mother's house three weeks ago. She must have delayed postpartum syndrome or something. She'd been having bad dreams.

“What's that?” Stacy said, leaning over. “Oh, the Slasher murders. God, this whole thing gives me the creeps.”

“Me too,” said Zelly. I LOVED THEM ALL. I LOVE THEM ALL.

“You know what I think? I think that Slasher guy comes from around here.” Zelly's stomach tightened. “I think so too,” she said.

“Did you know Rosalie?” the woman asked. Joey started crying where he sat on the cement, next to the slide; a two-year-old had run right over him. I DO NOT COLLECT CARDS BUT HEARTS, I STOP THEIR FOOLISH BLOODY BEATING. The woman picked him up and murmured in his ear.

“I met her once,” Zelly said. “I always wanted to get to know her better.”

“Well, she used to take her baby—Brian—to Church Square Park. I used to go to Church Square too, but I haven't been able to go since she died. Just once, and everybody was talking about it.” WE WILL MEET AGAIN BUT NOT WHEN THE MOON IS FULL. “You knew her?”

“Rosalie was my best friend in Hoboken. I'm from the Bronx originally. Are you from around here?”

“Born and bred.”

“My name's Stacy,” she said, and she stuck out her hand but it was sticky so they just laughed and nodded.

“Zelly.”

“Rosalie was from Secaucus. When I heard I—I think it was the same guy who's doing it in Manhattan.”

“So do I,” said Zelly.

“You do?” She paused to disentangle Joey from a piece of plastic beer ring. “This park is filthy,” she said.

“I thought Church Square was worse.”

“As a matter of fact it is. There's glass, and kids come at night and move the benches around like performance art. You come in the morning and see how far under the monkey bars they moved one today.”

“We have the Parks Department guys in the morning, but they don't do much.”

“The dogs are the worst. You know, the owners just let them run anywhere. The other day a Labrador came right up to Joey and licked him in the face. Can you imagine? The thing that bothers me is that it's not even legal. The law says you have to have them on a leash at all times.”

“Even inside the park?”

“Yeah, that's the law. Joey—not in your mouth. I know it looks like a cookie but it's garbage. I'm sure it's the same guy, though. Rosalie was blond. She dyed it, that's the ironic thing. She just started dyeing it a couple of months before she died.”

Stacy was obviously impressed with her own image, of having access to such esoteric knowledge about the victim, as though Rosalie were a celebrity and not a dead person. Zelly could understand that; she herself could only approach the periphery of Rosalie's death. Stacy was a Friend of the Victim. She was obviously not a bad person but she couldn't seem to help herself. Maybe it was the only thing that had ever happened to her, that vicarious death.

“That's the baby,” Stacy said, and, “Hi, Brian,” to a stocky baby boy wearing a Yankee baseball cap. He was with a pleasant-looking middle-aged Indian woman. “I didn't know his sitter was bringing him up here. I heard he cries a lot more than he used to.” He was not crying at that moment. He was looking at his hands. He looked practically supernatural sitting there looking at his hands, once you knew who he was: Baby Found with Blood on His Hands.

“You know,” Stacy said, “I'm getting so I'm afraid to walk down the street at night. I just don't go off Washington Street anymore.”

“I don't either.”

“I'm really getting jumpy. I'll tell you something, the other night—do you ever feel like you get—I don't know—not warnings exactly, but—I don't know—feelings about things? About places? When they look perfectly harmless.”